Mac blu ray player software review for mac#
Mac blu ray player software review install#
Mac blu ray player software review full#
Mac blu ray player software review pro#
Mac blu ray player software review download#

In hindsight, Steve Jobs may have been right to keep Blu-ray drives out of Macs. The audio occasionally stuttered on the menu screens as the disc loaded new information, but the movies themselves played back smoothly.Īside from potentially needing to re-download MakeMKV every few months, or re-authorize VLC every time it downloads a new version, this approach seems like the best and least aggravating solution to play Blu-rays on your Mac.

Mac blu ray player software review full#

Click 'Open.' In my tests, discs loaded in just a few seconds, and VLC offered full menu, audio, and subtitle support. The window that appears should show the Blu-ray you've loaded. Make sure your Blu-ray of choice is loaded in your disc drive. (Image credit: Nathan Alderman for iMore)

In the Integration pane of MakeMKV's Preferences window, select 'VLC' from the list of applications to empower it to play Blu-rays using MakeMKV's tools.

Mac blu ray player software review download#

Unless or until you download a fresh copy or updated version of VLC in the future, you should only need to do this once to play Blu-rays to your heart's content. MakeMKV can share the tools it uses to decrypt Blu-ray discs (opens in new tab) with other apps, most notably VLC. In the list of eligible apps under the Integration tab in MakeMKVs Preferences, check the box next to VLC, and then click OK. Open MakeMKV and go to Preferences > Integration.Should you need a beta key to run the app, you can always find the most recent one on MakeMKV's forums (opens in new tab). (Make sure you validate the downloaded file's checksum before you open it, just to be safe.) MakeMKV's author makes each beta version of the app available for a few months before it expires after that, you simply need to download the latest version again.

Mac blu ray player software review install#

Download the latest beta of MakeMKV (opens in new tab) and install it.

To play Blu-rays with this method, follow these steps: You'll have to jump through a few hoops here and there, but the minor hassle seems worth the ultimate result.

Mac blu ray player software review pro#

Get Macgo Blu-ray Player Pro from the Mac App Store - $64.99 (opens in new tab)įree, fast, and functional: VLC + MakeMKVĬombining two easily available programs - the totally free, open-source video player VLC, and the free-while-in-beta Blu-ray ripper app MakeMKV - can let you play Blu-rays as well as Macgo's app, if not better.

I'm sure that's a dealbreaker for some folks, but most users probably won't lament it. The only shortfall I found in Macgo's app, besides its price, was its lack of support for 3D or 4K UHD Blu-rays. I couldn't tell or test whether Macgo's app was region-free, but I'd be surprised if it weren't. Macgo's app even supports BD-Live online features, though you'll have to go into the Preferences to turn that feature on it's switched off by default. The app offers hardware acceleration for smoother playback, though aside from loading speed, I didn't notice a difference in quality between it and Leawo's app. No one knows what those colored buttons are for, but Macgo's virtual remote has them anyway.ĭiscs loaded far faster than Leawo's player - 15 seconds, tops – and played the same pre-roll ads and trailers they would in a hardware player, though thankfully, I could skip them just as easily as I would elsewhere. But there are a few options respectable enough to make it into the Mac App Store - and an even better one that's (mostly) free.

Mac blu ray player software review for mac#

Unfortunately, searching for mac Blu-ray player online gets you a lot of highly suspect sites with creatively translated English, each pitching their own totally not-at-all-questionable video player that may or may not actually play Blu-ray discs. And once those drives became available, a few enterprising companies who did (presumably) pay up for the keys to decrypt Blu-ray discs released Mac apps to play regular Blu-ray movies with those drives. Apple never built Blu-ray drives into Macs, and eventually ditched optical drives altogether to focus on selling movies through iTunes.īut some Mac users still need to burn their own Blu-rays or read data off BD discs, so there are plenty of third-party Blu-ray drives available for the Mac. With his characteristic taciturn restraint, he publicly called the format a ' bag of hurt' and likened the groups behind it to the Mafia. Steve Jobs famously hated the licensing hurdles and hefty fees Blu-ray imposed.